tle of servants in the room without your being aware? Kindly give me
a lead then as to what it is he has done to you."

She hovered before him with her obscure smile. "You see it for
yourself."

He shook his head with decision. "I don't see anything for myself, and
I beg you to understand that it's not what I've come here to-day to do.
Anything I may yet see which I don't already see will be only, I warn
you, so far as you shall make it very clear. There--you've work cut
out. And is it with Mr. Mitchett, may I ask, that you've been, as you
mention, cutting it?"

Nanda looked about her as if weighing many things; after which her eyes
came back to him. "Do you mind if I don't sit down?"

"I don't mind if you stand on your head--at the pass we've come to."

"I shall not try your patience," the girl good-humouredly replied,
"so far as that. I only want you not to be worried if I walk about a
little."

Mr. Longdon, without a movement, kept his posture. "Oh I can't oblige
you there. I SHALL be worried. I've come on purpose to be worried, and
the more I surrender myself to the rack the more, I seem to feel, we
shall have threshed our business out. So you may dance, you may stamp,
if you like, on the absolutely passive thing you've made of me."

"Well, what I HAVE had from Mitchy," she cheerfully responded, "is
practically a lesson in dancing: by which I perhaps mean rather a lesson
in sitting, myself, as I want you to do while _I_ talk, as still as
a mouse. They take," she declared, "while THEY talk, an amount of
exercise!"

"They?" Mr. Longdon wondered. "Was his wife with him?"

"Dear no--he and Mr. Van."

"Was Mr. Van with him?"

"Oh no--before, alone. All over the place."

Mr. Longdon had a pause so rich in appeal that when he at last spoke his
question was itself like an answer. "Mr. Van has been to see you?"

"Yes. I wrote and asked him."

"Oh!" said Mr. Longdon.

"But don't get up." She raised her hand. "Don't."

"Why should I?" He had never budged.

"He was most kind; stayed half an hour and, when I told him you were
coming, left a good message for you."

Mr. Longdon appeared to wait for this tribute, which was not immediately
produced. "What do you call a 'good' message?"

"I'm to make it all right with you."

"To make what?"

"Why, that he has not, for so long, been to see you or written to you.
That he has seemed to neglect you."

Nanda's visitor looked so far about as to take the neighbo